The cabin lights dimmed to a soft amber as the attendants rolled out the late-night first-class dinner service—linen napkins, real silverware, plates arranged like someone wanted to pretend airports had dignity. Lex accepted the tray out of reflex, but the food sat untouched. His mind was already three thousand miles ahead, in a city where Rose's last footprints were being erased one by one.
He reached for the water glass—
"Hey."
The voice cracked through the quiet like a dropped utensil.
Lex looked up slowly.
Vanessa's boy toy—still glued to her side like a decorative handbag that had learned to speak—was leaning across the aisle toward him, elbow digging into his armrest, expression aggressive in that fragile way young men had when they weren't sure if they were being compared.
"Got a minute?" the boy asked.
Lex didn't answer immediately.
He just stared at him.
A long, blank, surgical stare.
The boy shifted, uncomfortable but stubborn. "I'm talking to you, man."
Lex blinked once, slowly. "Unfortunately."
The boy bristled. "Okay, look—enough with the… whatever that stare is. I'm just trying to ask something."
Lex waited.
Vanessa, cutting into her steak with the lazy grace of a cat dismembering a mouse, didn't bother looking up.
"So," the boy began, puffing out his chest, "how do you know Vanessa?"
Lex set his water down. "We've met."
"Oh." The boy smirked. "So nothing serious, then."
Vanessa's fork paused mid-air.
Lex raised a brow.
"Is that what you think?"
The boy nodded, confidence growing like mold. "Yeah. I mean—look at us." He gestured between himself and Vanessa. "We're together. She picked me."
Lex stared at him again.
Longer this time.
Like he was trying to determine whether the boy's skull contained a brain or just decorative stuffing.
Vanessa snorted into her wine.
The boy flushed. "What? Why are you looking at me like that?"
Lex folded his napkin once, crisp and precise.
"Because you asked an irrelevant question."
"What does that mean?"
"It means," Lex said calmly, "that if you were secure, you wouldn't care."
Vanessa choked on a laugh. She dabbed her lips delicately. "Oh, darling. He's being polite."
The boy toy stiffened. "Polite? That was—"
"He's right," she said without apology.
"Vee—"
"Shh," she murmured, patting his thigh with the casual authority of someone controlling a much smaller animal. "Eat your scallops."
The boy glared, stabbed one angrily, then glanced back at Lex.
"So you're not, like… competition?"
Lex took a sip of water, expression unchanging.
"No."
"Oh." The boy sagged with relief. "Good. 'Cause you walk in here all tall and expensive looking and—"
Vanessa cut him off with a low laugh.
"Darling, he's not competition because you couldn't compete with Lexington if you sold your soul and borrowed three more."
The boy's jaw dropped. "What?!"
Lex exhaled a slow breath, pinching the bridge of his nose.
"Vanessa."
"What?" she asked innocently. "I'm complimenting you."
The boy pointed at Lex, spluttering. "But I thought— you said he wasn't competition!"
"He isn't." Vanessa shrugged, lifting her glass. "He's in a different tax bracket entirely."
Lex turned his head away, staring out the window as the plane cut through clouds like a blade.
The boy toy leaned closer, voice dropping into a conspiratorial whisper that was entirely too loud for first class.
"How rich are you?"
Lex stared at him like the question itself had committed a crime.
Vanessa didn't even let Lex exhale before she clapped a manicured hand over her heart in dramatic horror.
"Oh, sweetheart," she said, shaking her head slowly, "you don't ask that question out loud. It's like asking a woman her age or a producer his favorite NDA. Completely indecent."
The boy toy frowned. "I was just curious—"
"And curiosity," Vanessa said sweetly, "is how interns get sued."
Then she leaned his way, lowering her voice as if delivering scandalous celebrity gossip.
"Lexington Latham," she announced, with a flourish of her fork, "is the type of rich you cannot quantify using normal human numbers."
Lex rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Vanessa—"
"No, no, darling, let me educate him." She slipped effortlessly into a theatrical whisper. "Lex here is what I like to call generational menace wealth."
The boy blinked. "What does that mean?"
"It means," Vanessa continued, tapping her fork against her wine glass, "if he felt like it, he could buy the airline we're sitting on, rename it something petty like Latham Air, and have your ex-girlfriends escorted off the premises mid-flight."
"I don't— I don't have ex-girlfriends on this plane—"
"Oh, they could be added," Vanessa said airily. "Money makes anything possible."
Lex turned his head and stared out the window, praying for turbulence to knock him unconscious.
But Vanessa was on a roll.
"Lex is the kind of rich where his bank account has a bank account. The kind of rich where his tax lawyer's tax lawyer cries once a quarter. The kind of rich," she added with a wicked grin, "where if I were twenty years younger and had fewer morals, I'd apply to become his side chick."
The boy toy choked so violently on his sparkling water that the attendant took two steps toward them before thinking better of it.
Lex's head whipped around.
"Vanessa."
"What?" she said innocently. "It's a compliment. If I were your side chick, I'd be fabulous."
"You'd bankrupt five continents," Lex muttered.
"And look good doing it," she said proudly.
The boy toy's mouth opened and closed like a stunned fish. "Wait, wait—so you're telling me… he's, like… billionaire rich?"
Vanessa rolled her eyes so hard it looked like an Olympic event.
"Sweetheart," she said, patting his cheek, "if Lexington fell out of a plane right now, and the only thing that survived was the lint in his pocket, that lint alone would still be richer than you."
The boy toy wilted.
Vanessa took a delicate sip of her wine, smirking.
"Mmm. Sauvignon. Tastes like generational wealth and insecurity."
Lex finally turned back to her.
"You done?"
Vanessa raised her glass toward him in a toast.
"Not even remotely, darling. But I don't want to frighten your new friend."
The boy toy crossed his arms defensively. "I'm not scared."
"Hm." Vanessa tilted her head thoughtfully. "You should be."
Lex placed his napkin on the tray and stood up without a word.
Vanessa watched him rise, eyes dancing with mischief and something colder underneath.
"Going somewhere, Lexington?" she asked.
"Away," Lex replied.
"Perfect," Vanessa said. "Proximity to you is making him insecure, and I'd rather he not cry into the bread basket."
The boy toy sputtered. "I'm not— I wouldn't—"
Vanessa stroked his arm affectionately. "Shh, darling. It's not your fault. Some men are born powerful. Some men buy protein powder. Life isn't fair."
Lex walked down the aisle before he lost every ounce of patience he had left.
Behind him, he heard Vanessa murmur, almost lovingly:
"If I ever get bored, I swear on my manicure, I'm kidnapping that man and making him my sugar daddy."
The boy toy whimpered.
Lex kept walking.
Rose was missing.
And every second he spent trapped between Vanessa Carlisle's sense of humor and her boyfriend's insecurities was a second stolen from finding her.